


if you're up for it

by labeledbones



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-29 13:28:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19020892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/labeledbones/pseuds/labeledbones
Summary: “I’m in town,” he’d said when you didn’t pick up the phone. “If you’re up for it.”Some second person Timmy angst for you. :)





	if you're up for it

“I’m in town,” he’d said when you didn’t pick up the phone. “If you’re up for it.”

You weren’t sure if ‘if you’re up for it’ was about jet lag and general post project exhaustion or about something else.

Something else. Something else something else something else.

On another long flight back to New York, you bite your fingernails until you taste the salt-tang of blood. You finish off the mini bottle of wine on your tray table. You read a few words in the book you’ve been reading for six months. You look out the window and try to make out the shapes of clouds in the dark sky.

You’ve been away long enough to stop thinking about it. You’ve been away long enough to keep thinking about it. You’ve been away long enough to realize you will always be thinking about it.

Coming to this realization in a desert, late at night, deliriously tired but in that drugged stage of seeking, needing perfection, another take, another take, and his face still in the back of your mind. It was not enough to be hundreds and hundreds of miles away in a foreign country. It was not enough to stop speaking to him. It was not enough. He was still there.

You went to sleep that night as the sun was coming up, the bitter aftertaste of being in love at the back of your throat. Wondering: Does he still think about your skin? Does he still wonder about the inside of your head?

And then this, after so long, a one sentence voicemail.

“I’m in town, if you’re up for it.” You hadn’t texted or called back. You left his voice hanging like a ghost inside your phone.

You are decidedly not up for it. You are decidedly very much up for it.

You listened to the voicemail the first time.

You listened to it a second time. To gauge his mood, to listen for subtext, to pay attention to the speed and tone at which the words came up from his throat and onto his tongue and out through his lips, to hear the edges of his voice soft, maybe conciliatory, maybe not.

You listened to it a third time. For the background noise this time. The sounds of cars on a wet street, a woman laughing loudly and then fading into the distance, birds singing, a brief but sharp wind cutting into the words ‘in town’.

You listened to it a fourth time. You wanted to see if you could tell what color shirt he was wearing. The faded red t-shirt, you guessed, you were certain.

You listened to it a fifth time. Allowing yourself to curl around the warmth of his voice, the familiar landscape of it a balm for your homesickness.

You dig your phone out of your pocket. You pull up a picture of you and Saoirse taken by a stranger in Boston. The two of you bundled up against the cold until you can only see her eyes and a shock of blonde hair escaping from under her hood, and you layered all the way to your neck but boldly going hatless, red cheeks exposed to the wind. All four of your eyes are smiling madly in the pinkish dusk. You aren’t standing near anything historic or important. You’d just been walking around looking for somewhere to have dinner when Saoirse had asked a stranger to take your picture by a tree. 

She’d said something to you, just as the stranger was taking the picture, that made you laugh, made you both laugh. You can’t remember the words she said, but you remember the sudden startling joy that filled you, spilled out of you.

You think the point of looking at this photo now is: You were happy in that moment. You and Saoirse loved each other in that moment. And it was so simple, so uncomplicated, such a distilled and pure feeling to be laughing in the freezing cold with her.

You wanted all love to be as easy as that.

But instead you had: “If you’re up for it.”

The plane jostles a bit and you grip the armrest tightly. You close your eyes, breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth.

“You aren’t going to die,” he’d said to you once on a turbulent flight to Paris. He’d said it with such forceful certainty that you’d believed him even as the plane continued to shake. “We still have things to do,” he’d said.

It had felt like a vow. You would keep living as long as he and you had things to do.

“You aren’t going to die.” But you weren’t sure if you still had things to do now.

The plane steadies and you open your eyes. “You aren’t going to die.”

You open up the messages on your phone. The last text between the two of you something about a song you’d told him to listen to, dated two months ago.

You have no signal but you type the message quickly and hit send before your brain can catch up: _i’m up for it._


End file.
